Senate Democrats approve spending billions

3/18/2016

Senate Democrats this week once again voted for nearly $4 billion in spending authorization—but without the associated revenue needed to fund the spending. A high-ranking official in the Governor’s administration stressed Senate Bill 2059 “represents yet another proposal to spend billions of dollars without any way to pay for it.”

A memo distributed by state budget Director Tim Nuding noted, “The spending identified in this bill is not affordable because the legislature has already spent all available funds” and pointed out legislative Democrats have not identified any “corresponding proposals to reform government programs, to reduce other spending or to free up resources to fund this bill within existing resources.”

Nuding said that “Senate Bill 2059 is another in a long line of political documents that make promises that knowingly cannot be kept.” He noted that, “Voting for this bill adds to the state’s debt, causes those who are already waiting for state payments to wait even longer and potentially jeopardizes payments to the pension systems and General State Aid payments for school districts. “

In his memo, Nuding labeled the bill a “cruel hoax,” and said that recently the Comptroller’s Office reported a backlog of bills totaling $7.6 billion, with more than 50,000 unpaid vouchers on hand. Vendors who have already provided services to the state continue to wait months to get paid